How About A Holiday?

The concept of a drug holiday is standard medical practice for chronic users of pharmaceutical medications. Physicians use this abstinence tactic for a variety of reasons, including: limiting side effects of a medicine or allowing a patient to maintain sensitivity to a drug’s effect. When using cannabis, we often talk about tolerance: the need for greater and greater amounts to achieve the same desired effect, be it for pain relief or simply to get high. I would like to recommend the drug holiday concept for chronic cannabis users as a way to modulate the endocannabinoid system (ECS) and save the consumer some hard-earned cash.

The central piece of the ECS that is important to cannabis consumption is THC binding to the CB1 receptor. As previously discussed in CBE, this binding is what leads to the psychoactivity (or, the high) of cannabis consumption. With chronic cannabis use, the receptors are downregulated, or reduced in number, at the cell surface at sites of action. This reduced response means that over time it requires more THC to bind to the receptors for an equal effect, all the while spending more and more money.

So, how can cannabis users save money and still get the same high? Start taking a weekly cannabis break (or holiday, as they say in England)!